“I—­I came for a drink,” she said, stammering a little, in answer to Mr. Meredith’s grave “good evening, Miss West.”  She felt that she was an unpardonable goose and she longed to shake herself.  But John Meredith was not a vain man and he knew she would likely have been as much startled had she met old Elder Clow in that unexpected fashion.  Her confusion put him at ease and he forgot to be shy; besides, even the shyest of men can sometimes be quite audacious in moonlight.

“Let me get you a cup,” he said smiling.  There was a cup near by, if he had only known it, a cracked, handleless blue cup secreted under the maple by the Rainbow Valley children; but he did not know it, so he stepped out to one of the birch-trees and stripped a bit of its white skin away.  Deftly he fashioned this into a three-cornered cup, filled it from the spring, and handed it to Rosemary.

Rosemary took it and drank every drop to punish herself for her fib, for she was not in the least thirsty, and to drink a fairly large cupful of water when you are not thirsty is somewhat of an ordeal.  Yet the memory of that draught was to be very pleasant to Rosemary.  In after years it seemed to her that there was something sacramental about it.  Perhaps this was because of what the minister did when she handed him back the cup.  He stooped again and filled it and drank of it himself.  It was only by accident that he put his lips just where Rosemary had put hers, and Rosemary knew it.  Nevertheless, it had a curious significance for her.  They two had drunk of the same cup.  She remembered idly that an old aunt of hers used to say that when two people did this their after-lives would be linked in some fashion, whether for good or ill.

John Meredith held the cup uncertainly.  He did not know what to do with it.  The logical thing would have been to toss it away, but somehow he was disinclined to do this.  Rosemary held out her hand for it.

“Will you let me have it?” she said.  “You made it so knackily.  I never saw anyone make a birch cup so since my little brother used to make them long ago—­before he died.”

“I learned how to make them when I was a boy, camping out one summer.  An old hunter taught me,” said Mr. Meredith.  “Let me carry your books, Miss West.”

Rosemary was startled into another fib and said oh, they were not heavy.  But the minister took them from her with quite a masterful air and they walked away together.  It was the first time Rosemary had stood by the valley spring without thinking of Martin Crawford.  The mystic tryst had been broken.